Local Organising Committee

Prof. David Parry is a Professor in the School of Information Technology at Murdoch University in Western Australia. His research interests include artificial intelligence and brain-like computing, human–computer interaction, health informatics, and disaster eHealth. He is particularly interested in how people and computers, including AI, can work together to improve health and wellbeing while reducing risks from technology.

David stepped down as the founding Dean of the School of Information Technology at Murdoch University in 2026 after five years. He previously worked as an academic at Auckland University of Technology and the University of Otago in Aotearoa New Zealand, and before that worked in research and software development in the United Kingdom.

Prof. Abeygunawardhana is Professor of Computer Systems Engineering and Dean of the Faculty of Computing at SLIIT. Since joining SLIIT in 2010, he has held several academic leadership roles and previously served as Director of Technology Diffusion at Sri Lanka’s Information and Communication Technology Agency. He earned his BSc in Electrical Engineering from the University of Moratuwa and his master’s and doctoral degrees from Keio University, Japan, where his research focused on nonlinear control and motion control of underactuated systems.

His multidisciplinary research spans robotics, artificial intelligence, IoT, embedded systems, and intelligent sensing. His disaster mitigation work includes seismic and landslide monitoring, resilient communication networks, and drone-based emergency response. He also advances research development, industry collaboration, and practical technology innovation.

Dr Samaneh (Sam) Madanian is an Associate Professor and Co-Director of the Institute of Biomedical Technologies at Auckland University of Technology (AUT), New Zealand. She is an internationally recognised researcher whose work sits at the intersection of digital health, artificial intelligence and data science, and disaster and emergency management. Her research interests include intelligent decision-support systems that integrate AI, Internet of Things (IoT) technologies, and health informatics to support healthcare delivery, public health surveillance, and crisis response. Her research contributes to the global shift towards data-driven, predictive, and personalised intelligent healthcare systems. Her current research focuses on AI-enabled clinical decision support, digital twins, and digital technologies for disaster resilience.

She is a Fellow of the Australasian Institute of Digital Health (FAIDH) and has served on international grant assessment panels. Dr Madanian is a regular member of program and organising committees related to digital health and health AI research. She collaborates with international research teams and contributes to advancing AI-driven solutions for complex societal and humanitarian challenges.

Dr Thao Duong is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Information Technology at Murdoch University. She holds a PhD in Computer Science from Griffith University, Queensland.

Her expertise lies in optimisation, data analytics, and machine learning. She has published in highly respected peer-reviewed conferences and journals, including the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence, the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI), and the European Journal of Operational Research. One of her works received the Best Paper Award at the Australian AI conference.

Dr Sirui Li is a Lecturer in the School of Information Technology at Murdoch University and Co-Associate Dean for Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI). She also serves as an Associate Editor for the International Journal of Machine Learning and Cybernetics (Springer Nature). Her research expertise spans artificial intelligence, natural language understanding, knowledge graphs, responsible AI, and multimodal models.

Reem is a health informatics and disaster management professional bridging computer science, digital health, project leadership, and evidence-based policy to strengthen how health systems prepare for and respond to crises. A Fellow of the Australasian Institute of Digital Health (FAIDH) and a certified Project Management Professional (PMP), Reem’s work sits at the intersection of digital health, public health emergency preparedness, and applied research. She translates rigorous scholarship into practical systems, strategies, and policies that strengthen health-system resilience and support effective decision-making when it matters most.

Dr Ghamal Satya Mohammad is an Honorary Research Associate at the Indo-Pacific Research Centre, Murdoch University, where he completed his PhD on a Southeast Asia Environmental History scholarship. Before that, he taught history as a junior lecturer at Universitas Indonesia. His research focuses on the history of human–environment interactions on the slopes of Mount Merapi, Java, and more broadly on the making of volcanology and disaster governance along the Pacific Ring of Fire.

In 2026, Ghamal was a visiting lecturer at Universitas Airlangga, East Java. He is a member of the Indonesia Disaster Experts Association (IABI).

Xia Cheng is a PhD candidate in Natural Language Processing, conducting her research in collaboration with the Department of Fire and Emergency Services (DFES). Her research focuses on low-resource machine translation and multilingual crisis communication, with applications to emergency and crisis communication. She holds a Master’s degree in Information Technology and has experience in data analysis and telecommunications engineering.